SOFIA, Bulgaria (AP) - After a lifetime of brutal treatment, including walking on burning embers, Bulgaria's last three dancing bears will get to rest their paws at a mountain sanctuary, in an apparent end to the centuries-old performance tradition in the Balkans.

Activists on Friday bought the freedom of Mima, 8, Misho, 19, and Svetla, 17.

A member of Bulgaria's Stanev gypsy family plays with the family owned 19-year-old male bear called Misho in their home yard in the village of Getsovo some 400 kms. (250 miles) east of the Bulgarian capital Sofia, Friday. "The three bears dubbed Misho, Svetla and Mima will not dance on hot surfaces anymore.

 

NEW YORK (AP) - There's a happy ending to the tale of a lamb that went on the lam in New York City. 

 

The seven-month-old lamb escaped a live-animal market and led police on a chase through several blocks in the Bronx before being captured. 

 

But rather than being returned to the market, she was taken to an animal sanctuary. 

 

An official at the Animal Care and Control shelter in Manhattan says the lamb looked "very happy and relieved."  That's understandable. 

 

She was going to be sold for food before slipping out of the animal market Wednesday. 

 

Shelter staff have since given the lamb a fitting nickname: Lucky Lady.

Will we ever learn?  Just when you think there might be some hope, real hope for humanity, there's another scientific breakthrough, or senate speech to dash your hopes.  I've been feeling quite frustrated lately by the violent opposition to common sense that I see all around me.  Last month's absurdity was Nina Planck's totally refutable op-ed piece in the N.Y. Times in which she proudly stated that "babies are built from protein, calcium, cholesterol and fish oil."  There were volleys of retorts and rebuttals fired from all corners of the vegan and medical world, so I won't beat a dead horse.  Then I found that my car, which I just put up for sale, had been vandalized by the same ungrateful teenagers of well-to-do parents that smash liquor bottles on our front walkway every weekend.